


The Truth

by sachspanner



Category: History Boys - All Media Types, History Boys - Bennett
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Post-Canon, Reminiscence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 01:38:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sachspanner/pseuds/sachspanner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Irwin receives a letter from a former pupil, as he was warned he would, he hardly knows what to think. Especially is the author is someone he never would have imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Truth

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into this fandom, probably because I love these characters too much to try and spoil them with unnecessary extras. I wrote my Extended Essay on Scripps, and sometimes miss the months of my life dedicated to him.

Irwin drags himself out of his chair and onto the sofa, shifting his near-useless legs by hand. It is not something he has gotten used to, even after four years. It is something he hopes he will never get used to; resigning himself to a life on wheels was never part of his plan.

He shuffles through the post. Most of it is awful: junk mail, bills and fawning requests from this or that _up-and-coming television producer_. Their words, not his.

At the bottom of the pile lay a handwritten envelope. White, carefully written. Distantly, he imagined he might have seen that particular hand before, but he couldn’t think where.

Upon opening it, he skimmed down the page to the sign-off. Donald Scripps. He wasn’t sure he knew a Donald. Was he from a program he’d worked on? Perhaps a friend from Bristol? He read the body of the letter itself.

_Dear Irwin,_

_I don’t think I knew your first name back then. You always kept it to yourself, and it would strange for me to try and use it now. I got your address from the Old Boys’ network-_

Someone from his school days? That certainly explained why he wouldn’t remember the first name. The surname was Scripps. He certainly remembered Scripps. As he read the rest of the letter, he found that the voice in his head involuntarily leant towards Scripps’ Yorkshire drawl, lurking on certain syllables perhaps longer than he should have.

He’d always found that about Scripps’ essays. They were so clearly _his_. The content, to begin with, was of course dull, but the voice was established. If any of the boys had tried to pass off Scripps’ work as their own, Irwin would have known.

_I got your address from the Old Boys network- afraid I’m using it to be utterly predictable, something you’ll no doubt disagree with._

_I’ve applied for a reporting job with The Times. All going perfectly well, but they need a reference, and you’re about the best I could come up with. As we all found out when Rudge got into Christchurch, names open doors._

_I hope you’ll forgive me for being honest. You always said I was fond of the truth; a shortcoming, no doubt._

_Anyway, I just wanted to warn you before you get a letter from the Times asking for the same thing- I’ve put you down as my referee. More than anyone, I know I can trust you to make me sound, if not interesting, different._

_Many thanks,_

_Donald Scripps_

He wondered how Scripps was getting on, how all the boys were getting on. He’d spent two years pursuing that wretched teaching diploma, only to find he wasn’t any good at it. So, after two years of getting ready, all he had were those eight boys, utterly distinct creatures in his memory.

He could reel them off in alphabetical order- he’d done it three times a week for a term. Akthar, Crowther, Dakin, Lockwood. Posner, Rudge, Scripps, Timms.

Dorothy had warned him, when he told her he was leaving, that one of them might write to him one day. Only, he’d never imagined it would be Scripps.

Posner, more likely. He was fragile, more likely to have clung to his school days as he fell out of university into the chaos of real life. He’d come to him once or twice with his problems. Posner must have hoped he’d seen a kindred spirit, but Irwin had an edge to him that he imagined Posner could never hope to cultivate.

On the face of it, Dakin might have been a candidate, but expecting Dakin not to forget all about him and carry on having the time of his life was a little too much. He was one of those people for whom the world just worked. Irwin wouldn’t envy him; he had his own ways of getting what he wanted.

Lockwood had trusted him, and perhaps Wittgenstein a little more than he ought. It was probably for the best that he hadn’t contacted Irwin.

In fact, Scripps was probably the last person he would have imagined would write to him, if only because Scripps was the last person he could imagine doing anything at all. There were no clues in the letter, either. How was Oxford? Was he in love? Was he _happy_?

As a boy Scripps had been an enigma, and it was refreshing, if not frustrating, to find that he hadn’t changed. He had followed Dakin and Posner around because they had the best stories to tell. Whether he had liked them or not, he’d never seemed to show.

He was always the last of the boys to speak. In the classroom, he’d watch and listen, waiting his turn before simply getting to the point, and then retreating like nothing had happened. He was a foil, both for the egotist Dakin and the self-pitying Posner. How he could go around with such opposites Irwin never really understood.

To write a reference, then, for someone he hadn’t seen in five years and barely knew back then, seemed an impossible task.

Hector had said Irwin was a journalist, but never suspected that the same thing might be lurking in Scripps. Indeed, trying to coax Scripps around to Irwin's way of thinking had been near-impossible. In his essays, his use of quotations and trivia had always seemed ironic. He had stuck to the truth, too, in everything, something Irwin could never do.

If those four months of their lives had been a book, Irwin had no doubt that it would be Scripps narrating it. He seemed only to exist in order to bring colour to the lives of others. Scripps having a life of his own was almost unthinkable.

Irwin had no idea how to write a reference for somebody like Scripps. He was involved, but never the focus of attention, always hovering on the periphery of Irwin’s memories. He’d smiled at him, on his first day at the school, perhaps seeing in him the same dependence on an audience that Dakin and Posner had suffered from.

He must have known, that quiet observer, that television was Irwin's destination. The right for Irwin to be heard, without any of them really seeing him. He’d hated that about the classroom, the way they saw right through him. Hector had said the boys knew everything, and he was right. As usual.

Scripps never seemed to say anything in his lessons, preferring instead to sit back and watch while the others analysed Irwin. Perhaps that was the best part of his teaching, the fact he was such an entertainment for them in himself. Sometimes Irwin had seen Scripps writing, in a notebook Hector had apparently told him to keep. He never knew what about.

He had suspected it was him, of course, except, apart from that first day, Scripps had never shown an interest. While the others cross-examined Irwin on everything from his favourite food to his sexuality, Scripps had sat back. In fact, the first words Irwin must have heard coming out of Scripps mouth were…

_‘But it’s all true.’_

That moment the boy had dared to challenge him. Not with some gobbet Hector had implanted, not with Irwin’s own brand of flippancy. At the time he had put it down to naivety, but not being that much older himself, he was hardly placed to make that judgement.

He was being asked to write a reference for a man he barely knew, who had not spoken two words to him in a month and a half before springing on him a sentence that told more than Irwin’s teaching and his television programs ever would.

The truth.

He took out a piece of paper and wrote:

_If there is one thing Don Scripps has the ability to do, it is summarise the actions and behaviour of others, without making the foolish mistake of referencing his own. On a different class of paper, this might be seen as a weakness, but it should hold him in good stead: he can always be relied upon to tell the truth._


End file.
